


Can you take this weight of mine?

by Elisexyz



Series: Logan twins verse [3]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Isn't Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Lucy Preston Has Mommy Issues, Not very Carol Preston friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-12-18 10:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Lucy has a problem with Jessica.Despite what one may think, it has very little to do with Wyatt.





	Can you take this weight of mine?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissCrazyWriter321](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCrazyWriter321/gifts).



> As I had already told you, this is all your fault: you mentioned the parallels between Jessica leaving Rittenhouse for her kids and Carol choosing Rittenhouse instead, and I got feelings. I hope you will enjoy the result.  
>    
>  This is part of my verse in which Jessica and Wyatt have twins and she's back with the team because she doesn't want to raise them into Rittenhouse, but I think it can be read as a stand-alone. Enjoy!  
>  (Title from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOxXYV5f-Zo).)

“I made tea,” Jessica offers, the slightest hint of a smile on her face and somehow managing to sound friendly. “Do you want some?”

There was a thirty-seconds window in which Lucy managed to delude herself into thinking that she would be able to leave the kitchen without engaging into a conversation, but apparently she had no such luck.

“No,” she replies. “Thank you,” she adds, only a second too late, but it’s enough for Jessica to notice, judging by the way she furrows her brow for a moment.

Lucy raises her chin a little higher, staring at her in the face and silently daring her to call her out on that brief hesitation, but Jessica merely resumes to smiling, dropping her gaze first as she nods and slides into the closest chair with her own cup of fuming tea.

Somehow, that manages to irritate Lucy even further.  

She inhales sharply, heading towards the fridge to make herself a crappy sandwich like she had planned to, not so much out of hunger but more to pass the time – when you are used to chasing people across time, the down days sometimes seem to stretch endlessly, and their new guest isn’t really helping with the general mood –, but at the last minute she changes her mind and she grabs some juice instead, because at least that way she can be out of the kitchen in half the time.

Lucy is pretty sure she can feel Jessica staring, but when she spies on her with the corner of her eye she finds that she’s merely nursing her tea.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy ends up asking, turning her full body towards her as Jessica turns around, taken aback.

So much for running out of there as fast as possible.

“I’m having tea?” she offers, after a pause.

“That’s not what I mean,” Lucy clarifies, crossing her arms and trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. “What are you doing _here_ , in the bunker. Why did you leave Rittenhouse?”

“I told you,” Jessica says, slowly. “I don’t want my kids to be soldiers, or—or pawns in that game. I want better for them.”

Lucy snorts, anger burning at the pit of her stomach.

She doesn’t believe a word coming out of her mouth, not only because Jessica has proven to be a liar in the past, but because that kind of commitment that she talks about, that choice to prioritize a child above the greater good? That doesn’t exist in Rittenhouse. It’s brainwashed out of you, and there’s no way that a Rittenhouse agent, let alone one that was _raised_ into it – the way Lucy herself was supposed to be –, would actually believe that having their children serve the cause would be anything but a great honour.

She hates Jessica for using her children as a weapon to force them to take a risk with her. And she’s horrified at the dawning realization that the only reason why she would spin that story would be if she were playing them all.

“You don’t believe me,” Jessica states, not even bothering to make it sound like a question.

“I don’t,” Lucy confirms, drily. “And I’m not going to let you hurt Wyatt, or Jiya—”

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” she intervenes, and although she sounds as sincere as one can get, Lucy knows better than to trust the eyes and mouth of Rittenhouse. “I just want my babies to be safe.”

Lucy can only scoff, her lips twisted into a smile that’s probably closer to a grimace, and a new wave of anger and irritation washes through her upon hearing Jessica using _again_ the kids as an excuse, and a really clever excuse at that, because no one would find it hard to believe that a mother would want to protect their baby at all costs. No one, except Lucy, because she has seen what Rittenhouse does to you, she _knows_ that what Jessica is saying is only a sweet lie.

Lucy finally bolts out of the room, her blood boiling and her legs carrying her away before she can say or do something that she will regret.

She goes straight to Flynn’s room, opening the door and barging in without knocking. He’s lying on his bed, reading a book that he quickly sets aside when she comes in.

“Something wrong?” he asks, sitting up, after taking one look at her face.

It probably wasn’t a very hard guess, because Lucy can feel her cheeks boiling, she must look like a tomato.

She shakes her head as she snorts, pacing up and down the room a couple of times before she declares: “She’s going to stab us all in the back!”

Flynn blinks at her. “You mean Jessica?”

“ _Yes_ , I mean _Jessica_ ,” Lucy bursts out, and although her harsh tone is uncalled for he doesn’t seem to take any offense at it. “And _before_ you say anything,” she adds, when he only keeps staring at her, probably waiting for a better explanation. “This isn’t about me being jealous of Wyatt.”

That may help making it awkward, but before Jessica revealed herself as a Rittenhouse agent Lucy was perfectly capable of recognizing that she seemed like a friendly, smart and annoyingly difficult to hate woman. Her distrust now has nothing to do with what happened between her and Wyatt.

“I wasn’t going to suggest it,” Flynn assures, drumming his fingers on the mattress.

He falls silent, probably expecting Lucy to give him something more to work on, but the truth is that the only thing that she has is a lot of frustration, because everyone is believing Jessica’s story when Lucy _knows_ that it’s a lie, and she fears that they are all going to get screwed because of it, but nobody is going to _believe_ her, because she has nothing solid to go on and anyone she tries to explain it to will probably just look at her with pity and assume that she’s being a jealous ex.

Fantastic.

“Look,” Flynn finally says, when it becomes clear that the most that she is going to do about her problem is pacing around his room. “I don’t like her either, but she hasn’t done anything suspicious—”

“Besides lying,” Lucy comments, sharply.

“How do you know she’s lying?” he shrugs, because of course he believes Jessica’s story. They all do. “Rittenhouse is not exactly a playground, it makes sense not to want to raise kids there.”

“No, no, see—” she scoffs, shaking her head as she grins at the irony of how he doesn’t get it – which probably makes her look a bit like a maniac. “ _You_ think that, because you are not one of them, but—but it’s _different_ , alright? That’s not how it _works_.”

Flynn merely raises his eyebrows, silently inviting her to elaborate. And god, Lucy is desperate for someone to _get_ it.

(Maybe he will. He usually does.)

“Rittenhouse— _screws_ with your head, alright?” she tries to explain, her voice quivering a bit. She isn’t about to stop though, because maybe if he understands he will help, maybe together they can make the _others_ see too. “Children are legacies, and weapons, and nothing matters more than the greater good, that’s just how it works, okay? She _must_ be lying, because—because _this_ is what Rittenhouse does, it takes mothers and it turns them into complete _monsters_.”

Something shifts in Flynn’s expression, and it looks a whole lot like realization.

“Lucy,” he says, slowly, standing up and taking a couple of steps towards her. “Is this about _your_ mother?” he asks then, softly, like he’s afraid about putting the words out there.

And he damn well should be, because in the exact moment in which Lucy tries to deny it the word catches in her throat and turns into a strangled sound that seems awfully close to a sob.

Flynn looks at her like he’s feeling very, _very_ sorry for her, and it only takes him moving another step forward for the dam to completely break. A second later, Lucy has flown herself into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably against his chest and trying to sink into his shirt as he wraps himself around her.

It’s childish, she knows it, she’s a grown woman and she’s having a crying fit over her mother not loving her enough to choose her, but now that she has realized it, now that she got _started_ she doesn’t quite know how to stop, and she’s reasonably sure that Flynn is the only thing holding her together right now. If she took a step back, she might just shatter.

It takes her a while to manage to swallow the sobs long enough to speak.

“Why wasn’t I good enough for her?” she gets out, so quickly that it feels like she mashed all the words together, but it was a smart choice, because she has barely completed the sentence that her eyes are full of tears once again and she’s back to the starting point.

The thing is, if Jessica is telling the truth, that means that _Rittenhouse_ wasn’t the problem. That means that you _can_ be Rittenhouse and love your kids more than it too. That means that her mother _could_ have chosen her, she simply didn’t. She simply didn’t want to. So much that her last words expressed regret over not trying to brainwash her sooner, instead of being an apology for not dropping everything for her, the way a mother is supposed to.

“It wasn’t you,” Flynn assures, with so much conviction that Lucy might just believe it, if only for a moment. “Any mother worth her salt wouldn’t have done any of what she did to you. It wasn’t you, alright?”

Lucy sniffles, more tears leaking out when she squeezes her eyes and still tries to sink further into the embrace – she doesn’t think it’s physically possible, but if she tries hard enough she might manage to disappear, who knows –, and she doesn’t trust herself to speak again.

 _It wasn’t me_ , she tries, in the privacy of her head. _It wasn’t me_ , she repeats, and it only makes her angry, because not kidnapping your daughter, not trying to strongarm her into joining an organization of time traveling terrorists, _protecting_ her— that should be the bare minimum. And Carol Preston couldn’t even manage _that_ much.

“I’m angry,” Lucy mumbles, more of a realization than anything else.

Flynn snorts. “I bet you are. Anyone would be.”

She swallows heavily. “She’s dead.”

“Yeah.”

“I loved her.”

“I know.”

But maybe, just maybe, her mother hadn’t loved her. Not really. Not _enough_.

And maybe it was never about Rittenhouse either, not fully at least. Maybe it was just Carol. Maybe it was all her, and there wasn’t much Lucy could do about it.

“It’s not fair,” she mumbles, because if she’s being a child might as well lay it all out. Flynn has never judged before, anyway.

“No, it isn’t,” he agrees, drawing a small sigh and stroking her back reassuringly.

Lucy closes her eyes, trembling a little when a few more tears leak out and she tries to take a deep breath to calm herself down. It doesn’t work all that well, but she gets the feeling that Flynn isn’t going to let her go until she’ll manage.

(Maybe that’s enough, right now.)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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